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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2000, 240 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2001, 256 pages
A deliciously funny and wickedly sexy novel of love found (finally!) and love threatened (inevitably) by the families who claim to love us best. Wise and witty and thoroughly modern - a love story for the ages.
A deliciously funny and wickedly sexy novel of love found (finally!) and love threatened (inevitably) by the families who claim to love us best. Romeo Cacciamani and Julie Roseman are rival florists in Boston, whose families have hated each other for as long as anyone can remember (what they can't remember is why). When these two vital, lonely people see each other across a crowded lobby at a small business owners' seminar, an intense attraction blooms that neither tries to squelch. They're not sure what fate has in store for them, but they're not about to let something as silly as a generations-long feud stand in the way of finding out. That is, not until Romeo's octogenarian mother, Julie's meddling ex-husband, and a cast of grown Cacciamani and Roseman children begin to intervene with a passionate hatred that matches their newly found love, stroke for stroke. Think Montagues and Capulets, think wise and witty and thoroughly modern. Julie and Romeo is a love story for the ages.
The first time I heard the name Cacciamani I was five years old. My father said it, and then he spat. The spitting I had seen before. I watched my father spit out his toothpaste into the sink. I had seen him spit once while mowing the lawn when he claimed to have taken in a mouthful of gnats. But this particular spitting, the spitting done in association with the word Cacciamani, was done directly onto the cement floor of the back room of Roseman's, our family's florist shop. That floor, like everything else in my father's world, was kept meticulously clean, nary a leaf hit that floor, and so even as a child I recognized the utter seriousness of his gesture.
"Pigs," my father said, referring not to himself for what he had done to his floor but to the name that had led him to do it.
I wish I could remember the rest of this story, how the Cacciamanis had come up in the first place, but I was five. Fifty-five years later, only the highlights of such childhood memories ...
A. Manette Ansay, author of Vinegar Hill and Midnight Champagne
At last, someone has written a love story for and about grown-ups! And that someone is a marvelous new writer named Jeanne Ray, whose contemporary take on old rivalries, star-crossed passions, and clandestine intrigues charts a fresh, funny, exquisitely plotted tale of, well, Shakespearean proportions. Julie and Romeo is absolutely delicious. A smart, sexy celebration of the timeless nature of romance. Alison McGhee, author of Shadow Baby
Love and desire will not be denied in this lighthearted inversion of a classic story. Filled with the delicate sweetness of fresh flowers and new love, Julie and Romeo is a smart, funny, touching book. Where has Jeanne Ray been hiding all these years?
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